


Off the Clock

by SegaBarrett



Category: Original Work
Genre: Childhood Nostalgia, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 07:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5958918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mariela is working late at the library, and finds a surprise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off the Clock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sonotadream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonotadream/gifts).



Mariela Mullins had lost track of time again. She knew that her mother would be furious when she got home, but she wasn’t done with her project yet. After all, she had promised her boss that she would have the entire Young Adult Fiction section in perfect order by tomorrow morning, and it was only halfway done.

And yes, maybe it had been slightly her fault for stopping to read a chapter or two of a few books that looked interesting…

But what was she supposed to do? Sometimes it seemed nearly impossible to find these books again. It was like something whisked them away when she wasn’t looking.

She reached down and picked up a few more books. Maybe she should just shelve the rest of these anywhere and get ready to head on home. It was getting awfully late, and after a certain point she’d be stuck waiting for the bus in the cold. 

She didn’t want to abandon the job, however. None of the other librarians seemed to care about this stuff nearly as much as she did, and she didn’t want to let the kids down. What if they came looking for one of these books, and it wasn’t in the right place? It could turn them off of reading forever, and she would be to blame!

Mariela sighed. She should get up and at least drink some water; she shouldn’t get dehydrated. That wouldn’t help anybody, least of all the books.

She took a walk through the aisles, taking a few moments to glory at the fact that she was alone in this beautiful place. Everything about it felt as warm and magical as it had when she’d been a young teenager walking around in here for the first time, picking books off the shelf and bringing them home to read eagerly overnight. She could remember all the smells back then, the rustic paper scent that had been hard to describe and harder still to abandon to sit in cold hard chairs and listen to her teachers lecture on and on.

Time had gone by and her teachers had given way to professors, but the library had still held her heart.

She remembered when she had pretended that someone else walked the halls with her, skipping along behind her, just out of reach. It had seemed so real; even at fifteen she had had an active imagination. Now, she was nineteen, and had to tell herself again to put those thoughts aside. She had to be an adult, with a capital A, but she wished she didn’t.

When she was done drinking from the water fountain, she made her way back to the aisle she had been working on.

At least, she thought that had been the aisle she was working on – none of the books she had set out were sitting in their pile anymore. In fascination, she reached up and ran the pads of her fingers across the books, now put perfectly in order.

She picked up one of them, an R.L. Stine book she had always loved as a kid. First Date, it was called. She didn’t know what compelled her to take it off the shelf, whether it was nostalgia or something greater.

She flipped it open to find a single rose petal pressed between the front cover and the title page.

Underneath it, in pencil was written “To Mariela, I miss our strolls in the library. Spend tonight with me? – Charles the Library Ghost”.

If she’d been a character in that book, maybe she would have dropped it and run. Maybe she would have taken off and slammed the door behind her, and never came back.

But she held the book to her chest. Maybe she’d write this one off, or take it out and never return it.

The one thing she knew as that tonight was going to be eventful.


End file.
